By ANN WHITCHER-GENTZKE

“I’m interested in figuring out where we go from here. I’m interested in figuring out how we survive what I call ‘this age of disgrace.’”

Roxane Gay, writer and cultural critic

Greeted by raucous cheers, acclaimed author Roxane Gay took to
the stage at the Center for the Arts Thursday for an entertaining
and provocative mix of readings, formal lecture and humorous
— sometimes biting — asides.

Following her formal presentation as part of the Distinguished
Speakers Series, Gay was joined by UB’s own award-winning
sci-fi author, Nnedi Okorafor, who fielded audience questions while
posing some of her own.

Gay, whose writings embrace fiction, essays, memoirs and
political commentary, opened by reading from three of her recent
works. They included a funny and poignant essay on the experience
of being a newly minted PhD and first-year college professor
teaching in Indiana, “where many of my students never had a
black teacher before”; a sardonic short story with a feminist
twist about a man’s desire for an open marriage; and
reflections on her own stunned, then resolute, reaction following
the 2016 presidential election.

“I did not want to wake up in a world where suddenly
everything became precarious for far too many people,” she
said of her dismay the morning of Nov. 9. Gradually, though, she
came to “accept that the world was not coming to an end, even
if it felt incomprehensible.” Expressing regret that she did
not write on the 2016 campaign while it was occurring, she is now
determined to use her voice toward political and social ends.
“I’m interested in figuring out where we go from here.
I’m interested in figuring out how we survive what I call
‘this age of disgrace.’”

Indeed, Gay called for more cohesion in resistance movements, as
well as more thoughtfulness when deploying phrases that might make
the speaker feel better, but instead give false comfort while
proving a distraction from the critical issues at hand. For
example, “They go low and we go high” made sense when
used by Michelle Obama in her role as First Lady, but now
it’s bandied about with little understanding of what the
words can entail.

“She was right in her belief that sometimes there is
absolutely no need to sink lower than your opponent,” Gay
said. Now, though, “there is no high road with a man who
appointed a white supremacist as his chief strategist in the White
House. When they go low, we have to be willing to go subterranean
if we have any chance of resisting their great evil.”

Another seemingly benign slogan, “Love trumps hate,”
is “equally loathsome.” This is because “language
matters and sometimes it becomes an empty container for whatever
bullshit people want to fill it with. … We need to get
uncomfortable and that means moving beyond tidy words” that
mask troublesome realities, she said.

Further, the term “identity politics” is also
problematic in Gay’s view. It’s being used “to
dismiss the concerns and the experiences of marginalized people
… It’s used to derail conversations about how identity
can affect the way people move throughout the world. It’s an
accusation that we can somehow separate ourselves from the very
things that contribute to who we are. It implies that we
can’t both acknowledge and embrace our identities” and
be in harmony with the larger community, she said. Gay described
her own complex identity as the daughter of Haitian immigrant
parents who grew up in Nebraska, and is black, bisexual and by her
own statement, “fat.”

Gay’s warmth and gentleness amid the barbs were especially
evident during a lively question-and-answer session. She gave tips
to a Buffalo high school student and budding writer, and described
how she began to write at age 4 by drawing pictures of villages on
napkins, then writing stories about the people she imagined living
there.

Other topics ranged from how to eschew misogyny while enjoying
rap music, the structure and state of the feminist movement, the
“inescapable” nature of racism, the experience of
teaching college students at Purdue while pursuing her high-profile
literary career, and the need to teach children in an
age-appropriate manner about rape culture and their right to say
no.

She cheerfully acknowledged her enjoyment of watching
“trash TV” as a favorite downtime activity, and spoke
of her desire to develop her speculative or imaginative faculties
in her work. “I love to unleash my imagination … for
women of color, it allows us a dimensionality that we don’t
necessarily have in contemporary fiction or in contemporary
life.”

Asked whether she might explore new genres such as sci-fi, Gay
asserted her right to go forward artistically in whatever manner
she chooses. “If a man with no political experience can be
like, ‘I can be president of the United States,’ and it
works out for him? Then I think I can take a few chances with my
life,” she said to yelps, whistles and a standing
ovation.